Part of Parish of Leixlip

*(i.e., Lax-hlaup or salmon leap). *

The following townlands are included in the portion of Leixlip parish within the County Dublin: - Allenswood, Coldblow, Laragheon [*i.e., *the house-site of the hound], Pass-if-you-can, St. Catherine’s Park, and Westmanstown.

The only object of antiquarian interest is a ruined chapel, close to which there is a well known as St. Catherine’s Well.

There is also a well known as Sunday Well in the townland of Laraghcon. **

St. Catherine’s Park**

St. Catherine’s Park is the principal denomination in a small portion of the parish of Leixlip which is included in the County Dublin, and which adjoins on the east the parishes of Clonsilla and Lucan. All that now remains to mark the former importance of St. Catherine’s Park are the walls of a chapel, thickly covered with modern plaster, which stand upon the northern bank of the River Liffey close to the boundary of the County Kildare.

The name comes from a Priory of Canons of the Order of St. Victor, which was established on the lands, under the invocation of St. Catherine, not long after the Anglo-Norman invasion, when the lands belonged to the then owners of Lucan, a family called Peche, by whom they were granted to the Priory, together with other lands and various privileges.

The priory house was built on each side of a small stream, which falls into the Liffey near the ruined chapel, and must have been a picturesque object with the rivulet flowing through its Gothic court.

There was a ford called Athlouan across the Liffey under the priory house, and the Canons had the right of common pasture and of obtaining wood in the Peches’ preserves, as well as liberty to maintain a mill and a weir on the Liffey.

Amongst the Priors we find William of Kill, John Warisius, and Richard Shirman, and amongst the chief benefactors of the Priory were Wirris de Peche, Lord of Lucan, and Sir Adam de Hereford, Lord of Leixlip, each of whom left an endowment to maintain six chaplains to pray in the Priory for the members of their families.

Early in the fourteenth century the Priory, then valued for a small sum, fell into poverty, and was so oppressed with debt that in the year 1323 Richard Turnour, who was then Prior, and the Canons obtained royal license to assign the Priory and all its possessions to the Abbey of St. Thomas in Dublin. It remained in the possession of the monks of the latter house, by some of whom it was doubtless always occupied, until the dissolution of the religious houses.

After that event the priory house and lands were leased in 1541 to Thomas Allen, Chamberlain of the Exchequer. He was a brother of Sir John Allen, then Chancellor of Ireland, who was given at the same time a grant of the neighbouring monastery of St. Wolstan’s, and was a first cousin of the unfortunate Archbishop of that name who had been murdered a few years before.

On the expiration of Thomas Allen’s lease, in 1561, the priory house and lands were leased to one George Staynings, and some years later, in 1569, were granted by the Crown to the most eminent personage among their many owners.

The Right Hon. Sir Nicholas White, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, as this owner of St. Catherine’s ultimately became occupied, for a native of Ireland in the sixteenth century, a position of unusual importance in the government of his country.

In his voluminous correspondence preserved in the State Papers there is evidence that he influenced, for a time at any rate, the policy of English statesmen as regards Ireland, and enjoyed the confidence of Elizabeth and of Lord Burghley.

He was, in the opinion of Sir Henry Sidney, before prejudice warped that Lord Deputy’s judgement, a most wise, honourable, and faithful friend to English rule, as well as a man of resource and courage and of great ability as a lawyer; and so far as his own religious opinions were concerned, Queen Elizabeth’s ministers could find no fault in him.

But although he himself accepted unreservedly the teaching of the reformed church, he was lenient to those who differed from him and by his advocacy of toleration in religion incurred the suspicion and obloquy which ended in his downfall. Nicholas White appears to have been the son of James White, who was steward of the household to James, ninth Earl of Ormonde, and who was poisoned in October 1546, with his master in London.

In a codicil to his will made on his death-bed the Earl left Nicholas White a legacy to assist him in entering the Inns of Court, and expressed the hope that he would serve his son as his father had served him; but this White does not appear to have done, although he suffered on more than one occasion from being considered a creature of the Ormonde family.

In 1552 he entered Lincoln’s Inn as a law student, and seven years later was returned, in right of property inherited from his father, as Knight of the shire for the County Kilkenny.

His advance in life was thenceforward rapid. In 1563 he became a justice of the peace for Kilkenny, in 1564 recorder of Water-ford, and in 1566 a member of the Munster Council. At that time he appears to have been known to Lord Burghley, and two years later we find him in London, where he was received by the Queen, and appointed seneschal of Wexford - an appointment which did not meet with the approval of Sir Henry Sidney, although all he could allege against White was that he was not fit for military service.

Subsequently “the Cell of St. Catherine’s,” together with the manor of Leixlip, was granted to him, and the Lord Deputy was desired to admit him to the privy council. On his way back from London in February, 1569, he stopped at Tutbury, ostensibly to interview the Earl of Shrewsbury about the County Wexford, but really to see the Earl’s far-famed captive Mary Queen of Scots.

Of his interview with the Queen he sent a quaint account in a long letter to his friend, Lord Burghley, and tells how the Queen of Scots, understanding that a “servant of the Queen’s Majesty of some credit” was in the house, came to the presence chamber and “fell in talk with him.” He did not spare her feelings, according to his own account, telling her that the troubles of Ireland were then largely due to the Scottish people, that persons like himself thought she had good cause to consider herself princely entertained rather than hardly restrained, and, on her entering into “a pretty disputable comparison” between carving, painting and needlework, of which she considered painting the most commendable accomplishment, that he had heard *“pictura *to be veritas falsa.”

With this “she closed up the talk and retired into her privy chamber,” at which we can hardly feel surprised. Having satisfied his own curiosity, White, whose visit it may be remarked did not meet with approval from Elizabeth’s ministers when they heard of it, went on to advise that others should not be allowed to have access to Mary. Her beauty was not comparable, he said, to that of his own sovereign, to whose charms he had fallen a ready victim, still he was forced to admit that Mary had “an alluring grace, a pretty Scottish speech, and a searching wit clouded with mildness,” which might attract some persons.

From the time White acquired St. Catherine’s Priory it became his principal residence, and when the plague visited Dublin he found it a very useful retreat. Like Chief Justice Luttrell he was, to use his own words, a great housekeeper, and expended on hospitality not less than a thousand marks a year.

In 1571 he decided to visit England again, and after some delay set out with strong testimony of good service from Sir William Fitzwilliam, who had succeeded Sir Henry Sidney as chief governor, and from Lord Chancellor Weston, who appears to have been a great friend of his. While he was in England the Master of the Rolls in Ireland died, and White was successful in obtaining the vacant office, although he does not appear to have been recommended for it by Sir William Fitzwilliam, who was urging that he should be sent back to Ireland, as his advice was much needed on the council.

In White’s letter of appointment, Elizabeth, after referring to the services of his predecessor, and expressing a pious hope that he had won a better state by exchange of this worldly life, said she conferred the office upon White on account of her own knowledge of his sufficiency, but did not omit to put in a sly reminder of Sir William Fitzwilliam’s own esteem for him as a councillor.

After his appointment we find White standing much on the dignity of his office, applying for a guard of six soldiers to attend upon him, and asserting his right to discharge certain functions during a vacancy in the office of Lord Chancellor.

The latter claim brought him in conflict with Archbishop Loftus, who, according to White, had all the gain, while he had the pain of business, and at the same time Sir William Fitzwilliam conceived a great dislike to him.

During the agitation against the cess in 1578 this ill-will came to a head, and for two years White was suspended from his office, more, it is said, from dislike than from cause. Lord Burghley never lost confidence in him, as appears from a letter written by White “from his reclused cell of St. Catherine’s; ” and on being allowed to go to England, White completely reinstated himself.

Soon after his return to Ireland in 1580 he accompanied the military expedition under Sir William Pelham to the south of Ireland, and we find him at Cashel lying in the Star Chamber, as he calls the open air, and at Waterford gathering cockles on the sea shore, and filling his pockets with bread and cheese, which he had learned to like in England, on a man-of-war.

At that time he was successful in settling several difficulties in this country, and is said to have been the author of the extraordinary trial by combat between the O’Conors in the yard of Dublin Castle but everything he did received sinister interpretation in certain quarters.

White’s enemies in Ireland had been increased by the addition of Sir Henry Wallop, who while openly commending him called him in private a malicious hypocrite. By gifts of aqua vitae other things he tried to prevent his friends in England being influenced by reports of this kind, and even carried on a correspondence with the Queen herself through a certain Mistress Blanche, who lived in Lord Burghley’s house, but the constant accusations against him must have done him injury.

The arrival in 1584 of Sir John Perrot as Lord Deputy promised well for him, as the Lord Deputy conferred on him immediately, in Christ Church Cathedral, the honour of knighthood, but it proved most disastrous to him, as he followed the Lord Deputy in all he did, not, he says, from affection for the man, but on account of what he thought the success of his government.

A few months after Sir John Perrot’s arrival White secured the conviction of many malefactors in Leinster by “trial of their own nation,” and displayed much bravery in advancing in discharge of his duties into the wilds of the County Wicklow, and Sir John Perrot subsequently employed him in all his proceedings with regard to Connaught.

Needless to say. when Sir William Fitzwilliam was sent over to replace Sir John Perrot, in 1589, the old enmity between him and White arose with fresh force, and in the following year, when charges were brought against Sir John Perrot, the Lord Deputy found little trouble in placing White under arrest. White was then in bad health and wrote piteous letters to Lord Burghley, who seems never to have quite lost confidence in him; but the tide was too strong for him.

He was sent over to London, and at once placed under restraint first at Charing Cross, and afterwards under closer surveillance in the Dean of St. Paul’s house. In the beginning of 1590 he was a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and was sent in March with Sir John Perrot to the Tower, where he was kept in the closest confinement.

He appears to have undergone a trial in the Star Chamber, where he made at least one admission injurious to his friend, Sir John Perrot, and was in the end allowed to return to Ireland and restored to his office, although not to his seat on the Council. His health, however, never recovered from the effects of “his long imprisonment, and his death took place in February, 1593.

Sir Nicholas White, from whom the Whytes of Loughbrickland are descended, was twice married, first to a lady called Sherlock, and secondly, in 1587, to Mary, daughter of Andrew Brereton. This lady had been so unfortunate as to have previously married one Thomas Might, sometime Surveyor of the Victuals in Ireland, who was discovered to have a wife alive in England.

After Sir Nicholas White’s death she married Sir Thomas Hartpole, of Carlow. By his first wife Sir Nicholas White had, besides a daughter, three sons, Andrew, Thomas (who died before him in 1588), and James, two of whom were educated at Cambridge.

His daughter Mary was three times married, first to Robert Browne, who was murdered in the County Wexford while his father-in-law was seneschal of that county; secondly, to Christopher Darcy, of Platten, and thirdly, to Nicholas St. Lawrence, twenty-first Baron Howth.

Andrew White, who succeeded his father, entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1578 as a barrister from Furnival’s Inn, and three years later married Margaret, daughter of Patrick Finglas, of Westpalstown, and step-daughter of Richard Netterville of Kilsallaghan.

In 1585 Andrew White was in London, and to his father’s regret preferred “to exercise his legs at Court rather than to sit at study in Lincoln’s Inn.” He became a Roman Catholic, and was looked upon by Sir William Fitzwilliam, who took steps td prevent his approaching the Queen while his father was a prisoner, and by Archbishop Loftus, as a dangerous conspirator involved in plots emanating from Rome and Spain.

After his father’s death both Lord Burghley and his son, the first Lord Salisbury, took the most kindly interest in Andrew White’s affairs, particularly with regard to the lands of Dunbrody, in the County Wexford, which he said was “the only stay his father’s hard fortune had left him.”

Andrew White died while still a young man in 1599, and left a number of children, including his heir Nicholas, who restored the family to a high position - marrying Ursula, daughter of Garret, first Viscount Drogheda, and becoming a knight and representative in parliament for the County Kildare.

Both Andrew White and his son, Sir Nicholas White the younger, resided in Leixlip Castle, and during the troubled times before the Commonwealth St. Catherine’s was held on lease by Sir Robert Knight. At the time of the establishment of the Commonwealth, St. Catherine’s was occupied by a Mr. John Dillon, who had in his employment most of the other fifteen inhabitants.

In 1655 the Whites, “owing to charges made upon their estate in the late disturbances,” applied for leave to sell St. Catherine’s, and on this being granted to them disposed of it to Alderman Ridgely Hatfield, who in 1656 was mayor of Dublin.

After the Restoration, in 1664, it was sold by the latter to Sir John Perceval, a baronet and ancestor of the Earls of Egmont, who died in the following year, and in 1666 it came into the possession of Sir William Davys. On the other lands included in the portion of Leixlip parish within the County Dublin we find at this time on those of Westmanstown two houses, occupied by Edward Harrington and Richard Boothby, and fifteen cottages; on those of Laraghcon a house occupied by Samuel Lucas and two cottages; and on those of Pass-if-you-can two cottages.

The Right Hon. Sir William Davys, who was appointed successively Recorder of Dublin, Prime Serjeant, and Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in Ireland; attained to his high position as much by interest as by professional ability.

He was the son of a remarkable man, the Right Hon. Sir Paul Davys, an official in Dublin Castle, who enjoyed the confidence of such widely different administrators as the Earl of Strafford, Henry Cromwell, and the Duke of Ormonde, and who found it compatible with his opinions to occupy a seat in the various parliaments of his time.

Sir Paul Davys, whose father was a country gentleman resident in the County Kildare, appears to have owed his introduction into official life to his marriage to his first wife, Sir William Davys’ mother, who was a granddaughter of Sir William Ussher of Donnybrook, and after the Restoration found in the Duke of Ormonde a staunch and powerful friend.

Notwithstanding the fact that Sir Paul Davys had sat in the Commonwealth parliament the Duke of Ormonde speaks of him as having been ever true, like himself, to the loyal Protestant interest.” When English officials found fault with the Irish despatches the Duke of Ormonde defended Sir Paul Davys, saying that though his language might be out of fashion in England it suited very well in this country.

To Sir William Davys the Duke of Ormonde also proved a generous patron, at first from regard for his father and afterwards on account of the able service which Sir William Davys himself constantly rendered to him.

When the Duke came to Ireland in 1662 as Lord Lieutenant he found Davys holding’ the office of Recorder of Dublin, to which he had been appointed when only three years called to the bar, as well as the position of one of the representatives of the city in parliament, and it was no perfunctory way that the Recorder carried out the direction of the Corporation to entertain the viceroy on his arrival with an oration of hearty welcome.

The Duke of Ormonde then conferred on Davys the honour of knighthood, and made him Attorney-General and afterwards Chief Justice of the Regalities of Tipperary, and in return, when the Duke of Ormonde was superseded in the viceroyalty, Davys was instrumental in inducing the Corporation of Dublin to confer on the Duke’s gallant son the Earl of Ossory the freedom of the city.

While the Earl of Essex was Lord Lieutenant, when great disturbances took place in the Corporation, Davys was for two years suspended from his office of Recorder, and some years later, during the terror of Oates’ plot, owing to an allegation of his being in the Duke of York’s interest, was hurried out of Ireland into England.

But he had previously obtained additional influence from his marriage to a daughter of Archbishop Boyle, then Lord Chancellor of Ireland, as well as Archbishop of Armagh. While the Archbishop was acting as a Lord Justice in 1675 he had secured for his son-in-law the office of Prime Serjeant a position of honour, according, to the Archbishop, rather than of emolument, but a sure step to the bench.

The Duke of Ormonde, on his return as viceroy, lost no time in urging Davys’ claims to promotion on the ground of his services as Recorder, and of the gratification his appointment would give Archbishop Boyle, saying that he would vouch for Davys’ right principles both as to Church and State, and, although on the first occasion the recommendation was unsuccessful, in 1681 Davys was raised to the bench as Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.

When Davys purchased St. Catherine’s, in 1666, it appears to have fallen from its former state, and to have become an agricultural rather than a residential holding. He took over from the representatives of Sir John Perceval a large stock of cattle and sheep which had been purchased from Alderman Hatfield, and subsequently let the house, first to Henry Wade and then to John Pim, with a provision that in case of plague or other sickness in Dublin the tenant was to allow him and his father, Sir Paul Davys, to occupy portion of the house.

After his father’s death, which took place in 1672, we find Davys had taken up his residence there, and the house doubtless underwent renovation or was rebuilt. The year before his elevation to the bench, in 1680, Davys lost his first wife, and three years later, while residing at St. Catherine’s, he had the misfortune to lose his only daughter and child.

He had, however, meantime married again, and had taken as his wife a lady of very high birth and connection, a daughter of George, sixteenth Earl of Kildare, who had been previously married to Callaghan, second Earl of Clancarty. This marriage did not please his new wife’s relatives, any more than Archbishop Boyle, and in connection with legal proceedings between the FitzGeralds and the Earl of Arran, the Duke of Ormonde’s second son, Davys’ brother-in-law threatened to impugn his conduct as a judge and to get the King to remove him, a threat to which Davys made the fine reply that he feared to do an ill thing but did not fear the consequences of a just judgment.

After the accession of James II. Davys, who had gone to England for his health, which was much impaired from gout, was admitted to kiss the King’s hand, and although it was rumoured that he was to be removed, he still held the office of Chief Justice when his death took place in 1687. He was buried in St. Audoen’s, where his father and all his family were interred.

Sir William Davys had a half-brother, Sir John Davys, a son of Sir Paul Davys by his second wife who was a daughter of Sir William Parsons, and it was the eldest son of this brother who ultimately succeeded to St. Catherine’s and his other property.

Sir John Davys, who had been educated in Dublin University and at Lincoln’s Inn, succeeded his father as prime secretary and clerk of the Council, and earned a high character for prudence and integrity. Like his half-brother, he fell under suspicion during Oates’ plot, but reinstated himself, and after James the Second’s accession proved how little ground there was for the allegations by retiring to England, where he remained until after the battle of the Boyne.

He then came back to Ireland and resumed his seat on the privy council, but did not long enjoy his return to this country, as his death took place in 1692. He left two sons, Paul and Robert, who were in a curious position under Sir William Davys’ will, as he had bequeathed his property to the one who should take his step-daughter, Lady Katherine MacCarty, to wife, but this matter finally arranged itself, and on his marriage to the young lady the eldest son became owner of St. Catherine’s.

Paul Davys, who was created in 1706 Baron and Viscount Mountcashel, seems to have been a young man of fashion and a great friend of James, second Duke of Ormonde, to whom he acknowledged his indebtedness for his titles.

In some letters written from St. Catherine’s to the Duke of Ormonde about the time he was raised to the peerage, Lord Mountcashel dwells on the dulness of Dublin, but rather discounts the value of his judgment by retailing much gossip of not too delicate a nature about the Dublin aristocracy of that time.

He died in 1716, leaving his wife and several young children surviving him. Lady Mountcashel was highly esteemed as a religious and charitable lady, and in 1710 we find Dean Theophilus Harrison, a friend of John Strype the ecclesiastical historian, and a man of great piety, staying at St. Catherine’s, no doubt at her invitation.

She had lost several of her children in infancy, and in 1719 the death of her eldest surviving’ son, the second Lord Mountcashel, at the age of ten years was announced, a calamity which was followed in 1736 by the death of her last son, the third Lord Mountcashel, when only twenty-five years of age. The poor lady only survived this blow two years, until 1738, when her death occurred at St. Catherine’s.

St. Catherine’s then passed into the possession of Sir Samuel Cooke, a baronet who was twice Lord Mayor of Dublin, and for some years represented the city in parliament. During his occupation, in 1754, Mrs. Delany paid a visit to the place, and in her sprightly manner describes it as downright ugly, enclosed in high walls, with terraces supported by walls one above another, as formal as bad taste could make it, but capable of being one of the finest places she ever saw.

Sir Samuel Cooke is said to have discovered lead in the grounds and was more occupied in developing the’ useful than the picturesque features of the place.

Mrs. Delany says that the chapel had been connected with the house by a fine gothic gallery with bow windows, but that Sir Samuel Cooke had pulled this down and erected a palisade a proceeding that led the lively lady to exclaim that it was provoking to see such beauties thrown away upon vandals.

Sir Samuel Cooke, who died in 1758 and whose title is extinct, married a daughter of the Very Rev. John Trench, an ancestor of the Lords Ashtown, and left an only daughter. She married Richard Warburton, of Garryhinch, and they resided for a time at St. Catherine’s: the fee of which descended from them to the late Mr. Thomas Cooke-Trench of Millicent.

St. Catherine’s was later on in that century occupied by Sir Richard Wolseley of Mount Wolseley, the first baronet of his line, and for many years a representative of the County Carlow in parliament, who died there in 1781.

Before 1795, when the accompanying view of the house was taken, St. Catherine’s had been purchased by Robert, third Earl of Lanesborough, who doubtless sought relief there from the sad memories attached to Sans Souci at Booterstown, and who built considerable additions to the house and modernised the old apartments.

Subsequently it became a residence of the La Touches, his wife’s relatives, in whose time the house was filled with pictures and articles of vertu. While in the occupation of the latter owners the house was completely destroyed by fire, and was never rebuilt.

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